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Sen. Mike Duffy raised the veil on Ottawa’s lush micro-culture

Ottawa is where the money flows. The Senate expense scandal began to lift the veil on this lush micro-culture late last year. News of the $90,172 payment from former prime ministerial chief of staff Nigel Wright, to Sen. Mike Duffy (pictured), blew it all the way off.

In Ottawa money sloshes around like water in a tub. That is the root of the new Calvinism, some might call it Puritanism, that began to sweep like a little tsunami across Parliament Hill in May. That wave has yet to run its course. Indeed it had barely begun to crest when the House rose for summer break. MPs relieved at the reprieve should enjoy it while it lasts. That would be until Sept. 16, when sitting resumes.

Government MPs, especially those in cabinet, will find no reprieve at all. Witness the latest stories, again from Bob Fife of CTV, about Foreign Minister John Baird, and his eight-day free vacation at Macdonald House in London. It may be that six months ago, news of a minister’s use of a luxurious government property as a crash pad would not have drawn much notice. There was apparently no extra cost to taxpayers. Baird ponied up for his own taxis and drinks, his staff has pointed out. Yet it doesn’t pass muster. Not in this climate.

Some will lament this heightened scrutiny, bordering on hostility, as the latest debasement of an already frayed relationship between democratically elected representatives, most of whom are sincere and work hard, and the polity. If all politicians are assumed to be liars, cheats and crooks, what good person will run for office? Would a young Bob Rae, Ed Broadbent or Preston Manning do so today given the soup of incivility, meanness, suspicion and stupidity that now comes with the job?

Maybe not. But that is a weak counter to the arguments for greater transparency, and never mind fussing about the tone. Once more, with feeling: In Ottawa, money sloshes around like water in a tub. The political class doesn’t create wealth. It consumes it, too often capriciously and to little effect. Why on earth would there not be scrutiny, the more the better?

Green Party leader Elizabeth May, blessed with not having a caucus to mollify, this week put her own tab online, itemizing $23,684.82 in expenses for 2012-13. The Liberals have promised to do so quarterly beginning this fall. Well, good. But why aren’t all 308 MPs doing this now, voluntarily? There is concern, crossing all party lines, that such reporting will create a feeding frenzy, as scandal-drunk reporters parse wine lists and menus to determine whether a four-person meal at Hy’s for $450 could actually have been a drive-through stop at Tim’s for $29.50.

No one wants to be tarred and feathered and hounded from office, as former cabinet minister Bev Oda was, over a $16 glass of orange juice.

The response to that is simply this: Tough. Drink water. If you can’t justify it to an angry Twitter mob, don’t bill the Treasury. Cover it yourself, out of your generous salary. As a fallback, have your party pay. And never mind, please, reminding us that you could earn more money in the private sector. That is true of some MPs. For many others, $160,200 is the most they’ve ever earned in a year, or ever will. The average salaried worker in Canada brings home under $50,000. The MP’s job itself is a privilege, rich with perquisites even with the slavering hordes of the media mouth-breathing in the background. So get over it.

Years ago I spent a miserable 10 months working in the investment industry, on Bay St. I will never forget the introduction I got from one partner in the firm, as he sought to explain to the greenhorn the essence of stock brokering. “You go where the money is,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “You find a place where the money’s flowing. You get in the way. And some of it sticks to you.”

That, of course, is just the trouble with Ottawa: It’s where the money’s flowing. On any given day in the spring or fall, a neatly coiffed person in a power suit could go from one downtown meet-and-greet to the next, sampling tasty hors d’oeuvres, cheeses, fine wines and imported beer, and never pay a dime. The major parties are, apparently, awash in cash, in a way the private sector has not been since the halcyon days of the late 1990s. The Senate expense scandal began to lift the veil on this lush micro-culture late last year. News of the $90,172 payment from former prime ministerial chief of staff Nigel Wright, to Sen. Mike Duffy, blew it all the way off.

Opposition MPs have pounded these and related abuses with abandon for two months. What they may not have anticipated is the extent to which they themselves would be caught in the blast radius. New Democrats and Liberals have no option now but to surf the accountability wave until 2015. They will have to lead by example, to avoid being tarred by their own brush. The Tories will counter, with reforms of their own. And that may be the good that comes of something bad.

I am a national political columnist for Postmedia News. My work appears in the National Post, on Canada.com, the Ottawa Citizen, Montreal Gazette, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Halifax Chronicle-Herald... read more and Vancouver Sun, among other publications. I write primarily about national politics and policy.View author's profile